Dear Friends of Mission,
We are contacting you at the beginning of the ecclesiastical year to wish you every blessing from the Lord in your valuable work to support the missionary divisions around the world. Your Fraternity’s support to the Holy Diocese of Bukomba so far has been great and important and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
But the needs are infinite and never-ending, so please allow us to expose to you some of the main ones.
In our diocese there are many orphaned children who lost their parents due to AIDS. We take these children to the schools of our Diocese, where they are provided with education, accommodation and food. There are currently 130 Orthodox orphans and poor children studying. Please help these children to study and have a future for their life. Each scholarship costs 420 euro per year.
Another key feature of the Orthodox Mission is to create local clergy and staff for the continuation of the missionary work. Here the lack of clergy-missionaries is great. We have 190 parishes served by only 33 priests. Each priest has 6 parishes (under their jurisdiction)! Essentially, most parishes are unpastored, as Divine Liturgies are performed there 2-3 times a year. This is absolutely natural, since no new priests have been ordained for a decade now.
Therefore, our immediate goal is the creation and operation of the Orthodox Missionary Academy – Theological Seminary in Bukomba, which will prepare the new missionaries- priests of our Diocese. The budget for the construction of this Seminary amounts to 180,000 euro.
The diocese already operates the Theological Seminary”Mark the Evangelist” for new priests, temporarily in specially designed areas of the Episcopal Offices. It hosts 40 candidate priests. Their accommodation and food costs 500 euro per week.
We make an earnest appeal to your kind hearts for help and support. We ask you to remember us in your prayers and offer your assistance so that we can respond to the needs of the creation of the Orthodox Missionary Academy- Theological Seminary , either through the personal presence of professors of Theology, who will be proficient in the English language and able to teach, or through financial support. The young people who want to become priests and/or missionaries need your support!
We trust in God’s mercy and your own sensitivity, which always helps us through the historic Orthodox Missionary Fraternity.
† Chrysostomos of Bukomba
